On Tuesday, Jill Abramson was executive editor of The New York Times, 33 months into her tenure as the first woman to run the Times newsroom in the paper’s 161-year history. Less than a day later,

Abramson is no longer even an employee of the Times.

THE most august newspaper in the United States, the New York Times, was left reeling Wednesday after its executive editor, Jill Abramson, 60, was fired and replaced by her deputy less than three years into one of the most exalted jobs in journalism.

In a move that caught even the most senior staff at the paper unawares, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, the publisher and chairman of the New York Times Company, announced that Abramson would be replaced immediately by Dean Baquet, the paper’s managing editor.

When she took the job in September 2011, Abramson said it was “meaningful” that a woman had been appointed to run newsroom of such an influential organization, and her removal is now certain to be perceived as an example of the “glass cliff” facing women in high journalistic office.

In a brief statement released by the New York Times, Abramson pointedly commented that under her watch “our masthead became half female for the first time and so many great women hold important newsroom positions.”

Abramson’s exit was unexpected and almost brutally abrupt. Reports suggest she will no longer work for the newspaper.

As news dripped out about the lead-up to Abramson’s firing, speculation about the reasons behind Sulzberger’s decision began to focus on her recent attempts to hire Janine Gibson, editor-in-chief of Guardian U.S., to act as managing editor of the Times alongside Baquet. The Times, in its own account of a day of high drama at the top of the institution, reported that the move to woo Gibson had escalated the conflict between Abramson and her deputy.

On Wednesday night, Gibson, who was recently appointed editor-in-chief of the Guardian’s global website, theguardian.com, confirmed that she had been approached. She told the Guardian, “The New York Times talked to me about the role of joint managing editor, but I said no.”

The Times also on Wednesday night appeared to be heading head-first into a potentially damaging furor over unequal pay of senior women on its staff. Both Ken Auletta of the New Yorker and NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflik reported that a few weeks ago, Abramson had confronted the “top brass” after she discovered that she was paid much less than her predecessor, Bill Keller.

Sulzberger addressed the newsroom just after 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. According to multiple sources, he told staff that he had elevated Baquet to the top job in an effort to improve management. “I choose to appoint a new leader for our newsroom because I believe that new leadership will improve some aspects of the management of the newsroom,” he said.

A Politico article published in April 2013 had described Abramson as “on the verge of losing the support of the newsroom.” It reported tensions with Baquet and Mark Thompson, the former director-general of the BBC who is now CEO of the New York Times Company. It detailed a disagreement with Baquet in which she criticized his news judgment as “boring” and he replied by storming out of her office and slamming his hand against a wall.

Abramson later criticized the Politico piece as an “ad feminem” attack. Citing the story’s reliance on anonymous sources, Abramson called it “shoddy.”

Reports also suggested that relations between Abramson and Thompson were strained. Thompson raised eyebrows by extending his remit into areas traditionally considered the preserve of the executive editor, notably hiring a head of video production under his budget.

A New York magazine article also provoked comment when it reported that Thompson told a colleague that he could do any job at the newspaper: “I could be editor of the New York Times,” he was purported to have said.

In his statement announcing the convulsive changes, Sulzberger emphasized that the paper’s search for a digital future was a top priority. He said the new leadership had been brought in “at a time when the newsroom is about to embark on a significant effort to transition more fully to a digital-first reality,” adding that Baquet was “an enthusiastic supporter of our push toward further creativity in how we approach the digital expression of our journalism.”

A sense that the newspaper was not moving quickly enough to embrace digital reform was given in an internal “innovation report” led by Sulzberger’s son, Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, and revealed last week.

Poignantly, given her departure, Abramson circulated the report with a memo to the newsroom saying that “the masthead needs to make further structural changes in the newsroom to achieve a digital first reality.” Her note was co-signed by Baquet.

Abramson has long had a reputation for abrasiveness in her dealings with colleagues. She also earned herself enemies by leveraging the departure of about 30 editors and writers, including well-respected senior journalists such as Jonathan Landman, now at Bloomberg View, and Jim Roberts, now at Mashable.

But she also had strong supporters and could point to a stream of journalistic successes, including eight Pulitzer awards in her three years in office.

Nate Silver, who left the Times last July and took his FiveThirtyEight blog to ESPN, said in a tweet : “I’ll always be a huge @JillAbramson fan. She did a hell of a lot more good for the New York Times than the upper management there.”

When the dust settles, attention will swing to Baquet, 57, and to the many challenges he faces in leading the newsroom.

Given one of the criticisms that have been aired against Abramson — that she was at times a little distant from the newsroom — it was notable that Baquet stressed in his first speech as executive editor that he would be a regular presence on the newsroom floor.

Abramson was born in New York City, and grew up in a Jewish home. She received her B.A in history and literature from Harvard University in 1976.

While an undergraduate, she was the arts editor of The Harvard Independent, and worked at Time magazine from 1973 to 1976. From 1988 to 1997, she was a senior reporter in the Washington bureau of The Wall Street Journal, eventually rising to deputy bureau chief. She joined The New York Times in 1997, becoming its Washington bureau chief in December 2000.

She was a professor at Princeton University in 2000 and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.

On June 2, 2011, it was announced that Abramson would become the executive editor of the Times in September 2011, replacing Bill Keller who would step down from the position to become a full-time writer.

She married Harvard classmate Henry Little Griggs III in 1981. Griggs was then president of Triad, a political public relations company. He is self-described as a “writer, editor and media-relations consultant specializing in nonprofit advocacy campaigns.” They have two children.

In May 2007, Abramson was seriously injured in a truck-pedestrian traffic accident near the New York Times’s Times Square headquarters. She and her husband subsequently filed a lawsuit against the truck’s driver, owner and operator.